Chapter Text
Prologue
It had been a long time since he'd been back here.
Scar paused on the rooftop, staring at the derelict building below him. At the dark, empty alleyway where he'd once spent so much of his time.
Back then, he hadn't been a Firelight.
Back then, he hadn't even been Scar.
Back then, he'd been nobody at all - just another young sumpsnipe, taking whatever work he could get. The merchants and dealers always wanted new muscle to guard their warehouses and clubs, wanted someone who could loom and look mean and throw a decent punch; and there were always openings, of course, because the turnover rate was lethal, but it wasn't like the factory jobs were any safer.
The pay had been good - or at least, it seemed that way, to those who had nothing else. The work had been steady. Predictable.
Then Silco took over, and things had started to change.
Suddenly, there was a new street drug sweeping through The Lanes, and it was a hot commodity to have your fighters on it.
It'll give you an edge, the bosses said.
Make you stronger, they said.
All the toughest crews are taking it, they said.
The nineteen year old sumpsnipe had never considered himself to be weak, before that point. But seeing a Chem-thug hopped up on Shimmer tear his fellow crew member apart had been a horribly eye-opening experience. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to be big and fit. There were augmented monsters out there - and more and more bosses were keen to have their people similarly well-armed, to fight fire with fire.
Shimmer became marketed as a 'job perk.'
Everyone was offering it, and everyone was taking it.
Discounted accommodation, and we'll include Shimmer rations as part of your paycheck, they said, so very generously. 80-20 became the new default payment terms - 80% coin, 20% Shimmer for combat enhancement.
It didn't seem like a bad deal, at first.
Until you were pressured to take it for every job, just in case there was a fight.
Until your tolerance to the drug increased, and you were using your paycheck to top yourself up.
Until you couldn't go two days between doses without feeling sick.
Until your need started dipping into your rent money - your food money.
Until you were discarded for being too weak to fight, losing the roof over your head, and some fresh new muscle was hired to repeat the cycle with.
Those predatory 80-20 payment terms shifted to 60-40, then to 50-50. Scar had worked alongside people who were almost exclusively paid in Shimmer, or who were blowing their entire pay on sustaining their habit. He'd watched people be used up and tossed aside. Fighters who used regularly, across the city, had started discovering the ugly truth they hadn't been told about.
They were the test subjects for this new drug, and its benefits came at a serious cost.
It had been a trap all along. Shimmer was cheaper to supply than fair wages - and more effective at keeping employees from leaving. Where was there to go? All the sump bosses were jumping onto the trend. A good worker was a dependent worker, after all, and there was always someone desperate enough to take the deal and hope for the best.
His days had sank into a hazy, bleak routine. Wake up. Take his dose. Go out to fight whoever Niska expected the crew to fight that day, in her neverending territorial pissing contest over the same block of streets.
Take his next dose, lick his wounds, and chill in the alley out back of The Rats Castle - the coined name for the cramped, miserable excuse for a househare he rented. See if he could barter for some extra smokes, or food - or a spare vial of Shimmer off any of his crew members.
Go to bed. Repeat.
A miserable fucking life, with no fucking future.
Stuck in a pit with no way out, handed no tools except a shovel to continue digging his own grave.
Boots crunched against broken shards of glass as Scar finally dropped down to the ground, walking through the alley that had once been such a significant part of his life. Niska was long gone - The Rats Castle was just one of many skeletons in this city, another abandoned building not considered worth the repair costs. But no doubt there were still many other exploitative bosses operating their own thinly veiled Shimmer dens across the city, today.
Scar found his old spot. Traced fingers along the wall, until he found the name carved into the cold concrete - Valkos.
Funny, how badly he'd once wanted that name to be remembered. Now it felt like the name of someone else.
Leaning back against the wall, Scar tilted his head back and breathed in - it still smelled the same, even now. Like dank despair and desperation.
He closed his eyes, and took a moment.
This place, right here, had been his rock bottom. It felt fitting to revisit it now, in the wake of what he was about to do. An important reminder.
This was where it had all began, eight years ago. The night he'd made a choice that had changed everything. The night he'd started his slow, arduous climb out of the pit, to a better life.
The night he'd met Ekko.